The present disclosure generally relates to the field of stereophony, and specifically to acquiring personalized head-related transfer functions (HRTF) for users of virtual reality systems.
Humans can determine locations of sounds by comparing sounds perceived at each ear. Specifically, the brain determines the location of a sound source by utilizing subtle intensity, spectral, and timing differences of the sound perceived in each ear. For example, sound sources located closer to the left ear may be signaled by a subtle, but faster arrival time of sound in the left ear and a relatively high amplitude of high-frequency sounds perceived in the left ear compared to that in the right ear.
The intensity, spectra, and arrival time of the sound at each ear is characterized by a HRTF unique to each user based on various anatomical features of the user. Specifically, the HRTF indicates the changes between the source sound signal to that of the sound signal received at each ear. Thus, perceived sounds from sound sources located at various locations relative to the user can be simulated if the unique HRTF for the user is known.
In virtual reality systems, it is advantageous to generate an accurate virtual acoustic environment for users that reproduce sounds for sources at different virtual locations from the user to create an immersive virtual reality environment. However, conventional approaches for determining individual HRTF are inefficient and typically require significant amounts of hardware resources and time. Alternatively, the accuracy of the virtual acoustic environment is diminished if a common HRTF is used across multiple users.